signed first edition 1 vols. 8vo
1887 · Boston
by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, The Riverside Press, 1887. First American edition following very shortly after the English edition. BAL binding B, priority undetermined. 1 vols. 8vo. Original dark green,cloth, beveled edges, winged urn in gilt on upper cover, in blind on lower, top edge gilt, blue-black coated endpapers, 14 pages publisher's advertisements at back. Slightest rubbing of cloth, one leaf with minute tear in margin (carelessly opened). Near fine. First American edition following very shortly after the English edition. BAL binding B, priority undetermined. 1 vols. 8vo. Presentation Copy with Autograph Poem on Stonehenge. Inscribed with the concluding stanzas of The Broken Circle (at p. 172 in the present volume):
Cold is the Druid's altar-stone,
Its vanished flame no more returns,
But ours no chilling damp has known,
Unchanged, unchanging still it burns
So let our broken circle stand
A wreck, a remnant, yet the same
While one last, loving, faithful hand
Still lives to feed its altar flame
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Boston, March 17th 1888
Tipped in at the back is a leaf in the author's hand: "J.R. Kendall Esq, 29 Pemberton Square, With the thanks of O. W. Holmes" BAL 9006 (Inventory #: 243453)
Cold is the Druid's altar-stone,
Its vanished flame no more returns,
But ours no chilling damp has known,
Unchanged, unchanging still it burns
So let our broken circle stand
A wreck, a remnant, yet the same
While one last, loving, faithful hand
Still lives to feed its altar flame
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Boston, March 17th 1888
Tipped in at the back is a leaf in the author's hand: "J.R. Kendall Esq, 29 Pemberton Square, With the thanks of O. W. Holmes" BAL 9006 (Inventory #: 243453)